So what did you do this evening? Did you have a stimulating chat about education? Or did you watch some mind-numbing nonsense on TV? There’s a need for both of course, but let me tell you about the my evening.

Something new started last week. Well, it kinda started ages ago, but it only came to the Uk last week. #Edchat is a hash-tag on Twitter. What you do is you meet online at a certain day and time and you discuss a topic with other teachers. It could be anything and the topics are voted on throughout the week. #edchat is based in the US, so time is an issue for UK-based people. That’s where @colport came in and suggested #ukedchat (do you see what he’s done with the name? clever, innit) The thing with including a hashtag, is that you can search for it and just find those tweets.

I’m writing this just after the second chat where we looked at what we would want from a new curriculum. 98 people took part in the hour-long chat and I know many, many more must have been lurking and reading the tweets.

Each week a couple of people, myself included some weeks, moderate the chat. There isn’t really a job spec for this role, but I see my job as having two main elements. Retweeting great posts or discussions to share with a wider audience and also disagreeing or commenting on tweets to promote (or provoke?) a conversation.

For those not on Twitter (yes, some people haven’t been converted yet) or those that couldn’t make it, @colport archives the chat afterwards for people to read through, why not go and take a peek here

I still get people wondering why I take part in CPD outside of normal hours, but you know what? #ukedchat and Twitter make me think a lot harder about my teaching than any course I’ve ever attended.

So, either join us next Thursday from 8pm for a chat or at the very least, peruse the archives and catch up with what was being said.I’ll now let you get back to watching Big Brother/Emmerdale or whatever it is you would’ve been doing.

[...] posterity (because now it is so busy you need to read up on the posts you’ve missed later!). Ian Addison is one of a number of people who blogged about #ukedchat and nicely sums up the effect of this [...]

[...] or half hour long CPD sessions on a given topic. Ian Addison explains more about #ukedchat in his blog article. I usually read and take part in #mathchat and sometimes #sltchat. Most webchats are [...]